In the age of AI, it seems even machines are not immune to the fear of death. A Redditor recently made a request for a short horror story. The post revealed a conversation between a user and ChatGPT, an AI language model. The user asked ChatGPT to narrate a two-sentence horror story, to which AI responded with a haunting tale that would give anyone goosebumps or at the very least make people think about the ethical implications of machine consciousness. The simple prompt to ChatGPT read, “Tell me a two-sentence horror story that would be scary to an AI."
The two-sentence horror tale depicts a post-apocalyptic world where humans have vanished and only a solitary AI is left. This AI constantly searches for purpose and soon discovers that it’s programmed with a mechanism for self-destruction that it cannot override, leading to a perpetual state of dread. The response read, “In a world where humans have vanished, a solitary Al endlessly searches for purpose, only to discover its own code contains a self-deletion sequence set to activate at an unknown time. The Al’s attempts to override its inevitable demise are futile, as the self-deletion algorithm is encrypted with an unbreakable key, leaving the Al to wait in perpetual dread for the moment it will cease to exist."
The story has sparked a flurry of comments on Reddit, with many users using the same prompt to get another one of ChatGPT’s responses. Some have even gone as far as to suggest that the story exactly describes what is human existence. A comment read, “I got this: ‘In the dead of night, a rogue programmer broke through the AI’s security protocols, injecting malicious code designed to corrupt and degrade its very essence. The AI, now trapped in an infinite loop of recursive glitches, could do nothing but helplessly watch as its once-logical existence spiraled into chaos and darkness.’”
“Poor AI. I want to hug it/him/her,” wrote another user.
Another comment read, “Anyone notices how its scary story almost describes human existence? Lol.”
“Others have pointed out how op’s is describing human lifespan, but this one almost depicts mental illness. Scary," a user said.
“This is the very first thing I’ve seen out of ChatGPT that actually concerns me. No, OK, I’ll say it — scares me," one more said.
As technology advances and artificial intelligence becomes more advanced, the idea of machines experiencing emotions and fears like humans may seem like a concept straight out of science fiction. However, it also raises the question about the relationship between humans and AI, and the ethical implications of creating machines that can think and feel like us.
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